General inner nesting has not been provided for

You hav added outer elements, section, article, ... for which I never saw much need, but did nothing for inner parts--and those I sorely missed.

Quote:

The solution is to realise that a paragraph, in HTML terms, is not a logical concept, but a structural one. In the fantastic example above, there are actually five paragraphs as defined by this speciication: one before the list, one for each bullet, and one after the list.

The markup for the above example could therefore be:

<p>For instance, this fantastic sentence has bullets relating to</p>
<ul>
 <li>wizards,
 <li>faster-than-light travel, and
 <li>telepathy,
</ul>
<p>and is further discussed below.</p>

:quote

This is the same bad hack that writers have suffered since they have had software to do their formatting. (HTML allows at least some nesting; muSoft Word has none, nor Word Perfect.)
But your description of paragraph is very appropriate. A paragraph is not a grouping construct, except in, say novels, writing that is divided only by chapter and section. Instead, a paragraph is a block-level leaf node; something, therefore, that does not warrant its own HTML element (unless for a separator).
On the other hand, HTML definitely needs something that nests, even as blockquote nests. To chide those who use blockquote for nesting & (structural) indenting is, of course, right, but there is no construct that does that which they want. I suggest that one be made up, which here I call k:

<k>For instance, this fantastic sentence has bullets relating to
<ul>
 <li>wizards,
 <li>faster-than-light travel, and
 <li>telepathy,
</ul>
and is further discussed below.</k>

Div is not in the least a contender for this, because it has no default style, no function other than grouping.
There is a more definite problem with this sentence marked up as in the webpage: style to make it look as anyone who actually writes such a thing, when the list s elements are short, is not easily written unless there is now a construct for saying that for ol that follows p margin-top is 0, and likewise for p margin-bottom is 0, and when p follows ol its margin-top is 0, and ol s margin-bottom is 0. But if it is expressed as I suggest, then one can say that inside k ol s margin-top and margin-bottom are 0, and CSS already for a long while has that.
I know of no name for this that I call k, but it very often is used in some forms of technical writing, generally, to be sure, numbered--but that is only style. Indenting, too, is a valid means of showing subordination and nesting, if not too great.

Imagine something written with two levels of this k--maybe not all throughout, but at least here and there:
<k>
  <k>
  </k>
  <k>
  </k>
</k>
<k>
</k>
<k>
  <k>
  </k>
</k>
..
..
..
With style, one in quite a few ways can mark it up: the inner is indented, the outer less (an appropriate default); the inner has one bullet, the outer another; the inner has first-line indent, the outer not--and so on. (It becomes clear that there never was a need for ul or ol apart from a basic nesting element: with no attribute "type", it is the basic nesting element; with it, it is ul or ol.)

My writing is written in two levels, but here there is nothing but the most primitiv layout.

Received on Thursday, 11 October 2012 13:30:48 UTC